jules?

I like parables or at least comparing human behaviour now to figure out what may have happened then.

Imagine a desert land, one that is rather unimportant but is on the road to everywhere else to the point that for a 1000 years and more great empires from the north, east and west tried to control it. After the Russians were driven out the land fell under civil war. A consequence was that the educated left and the educated religious teachers died off. The whole structure disintegrated, but a faithful revival held on in the refugee camps of the wild west of Pakistan. The new faithful were without orthodoxy so they named themselves students = talib. The only thing was that their version of faith was hardcore, simplistic and corrupt.

2000 years earlier in a little desert kingdom far far away war had also destroyed the orthodox structure of the Jewish faith. After the great wars of 66 & 115 & 132 the educated had pretty well left, and the faith became fragmented. In close exiled communities the old faith evolved into Rabbinic but amongst the poor and the uneducated, especially the refugees in cities a new corrupted, simplistic form of the faith evolved. Instead of a new nation on earth the new world would be in heaven. Not really Judaism but the Taliban don't really follow orthodoxy either.

It's not perfect as a parable but people are people and don't seem to change that much. Can history teach us anything?

habber

I declare fatwa on dummies who use dumb words like Xtian.... stop making up words.

andrewcriddle

When you say that the taliban follow a corrupt form of Islam what do you mean ?

Andrew Criddle

jules?

The most noticeable aspect of their belief is how literal it is. Educated clerics over the centuries have adjusted to changes in lifestyles and through interpretation have kept up with modernity. The Taliban stuck to a rigid and extremely conservative interpretation to the extreme of banning all photos when the normal interpretation was a ban on the image of god and Mohamed. Therefore it has become a corruption of orthodoxy.